the wanting is less interesting

Video

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:38:15 +0100

i hate dialectics / culture industry you win / no i win / no one fucking wins

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:01:00 +0100

i just have two things to say. because i am so hot and bothered by the media insanity overload today. regarding a quote from this article, written in defense of angelina jolie, on the double mastectomy thing:

“What we talk about when we talk about celebrities is, as ever, ourselves.“

first - NO. because a celebrity is a product. it is an economic relationship between corporate entities that is mistaken for a social relationship between humans. we think we are relating to celebrities as we would to someone we meet at a party, or someone who lives in our community, or etc. but celebrities are constructions, mirages, images suspended in clouds of marketing. thus, the preventive double mastectomy of a person within a community is a scary surgical procedure. a new york times article about a preventive double mastectomy is a product.

second - YES. because i see everything anyone famous ever says as both belonging to them and belonging in the public eye, part construction and part projected self. this means that i see angelina jolie’s projection of care, suffering, and familial love as a product, carefully tailored to ensure that her image will be read in a specific way. and when i am talking about this i am talking about myself because i am a poet, always navigating the bullshit but totally real line dividing the real self who writes, and the product that is made to be consumed. i still think that poetry has a chance to be made of real self. if i didn’t believe that i would not be able to write at all. but it is a slim one, and always running hard to escape, and bullshit is an ever-present and very real possibility. dear frank o’hara, how did you always manage to escape.

but maybe there are so many more things to say. how i am so stirred by all the women immediately rushing to defend this as a women’s rights issue. BECAUSE IT IS. because it provokes people into making extreme statements, either about a woman’s breasts or about her hunger for fame. but how can it only be that, when it is also about how we swallow certain kinds of products without even knowing that we’re practically choking.

A Fiery Flying Roule:: Keston Sutherland | THESES ON ANTISUBJECTIVIST DOGMA

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:54:00 +0100

A Fiery Flying Roule:: Keston Sutherland | THESES ON ANTISUBJECTIVIST DOGMA:

it is a nice rhetorical touch here to bring in ‘the conceptualists’ (a pretty varied bunch) as the other half of this imagined binary, but all that notwithstanding, i don’t know what makes anyone think that anyone needs to hear yet more poetry in which foregrounded is ONE talking about ONESELF from ONE’S OWN PERSPECTIVE.

in an argument based on binaries, the stronger rhetorician always wins. that’s it.

afieryflyingroule:

1. Arguments against the dominant role of the subject or of “subjectivity” in art have existed for as long as the art they reject. “Anti-subjectivist” accounts of art are “Romantic” in origin and were first asserted contemporaneously with the “subjectivist” accounts of art which they are usually…

the crimes that fall / the crimes that rise

Sat, 04 May 2013 09:49:00 +0100

the crimes that fall / the crimes that rise

Photo

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:53:00 +0100

bummer

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:54:32 +0100

bummer

Video

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:08:24 +0100

POEM270413

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:30:00 +0100

POEM270413

'TO'

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:38:56 +0000

'TO':

new poem up at CAConrad’s Jupiter88 video journal site

Cutting up Michel Foucault’s Foreword to the English...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:39:01 +0000

Cutting up Michel Foucault’s Foreword to the English edition of The Order of Things

trollthread: CACONRAD TRANSLUCENT SALAMANDER TROLL THREAD...

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:53:55 +0000

trollthread:

CACONRAD

TRANSLUCENT SALAMANDER

TROLL THREAD 2013

PURCHASE | DOWNLOAD

queertone: end of Justin Katko / Keith Tuma’s HOLIDAY IN...

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:40:45 +0000

queertone:

end of Justin Katko / Keith Tuma’s HOLIDAY IN TIKRIT

the diaphanous beauty of an undocumented event

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:28:00 +0000

mawbli:

the event that is ruined by being documented

i was thinking this same thought in the night last night after the Bad Press 10 Years Celebration and launch of Sophie Robinson’s new book at X Marks the Bökship. part of me was like, why THE FUCK did no one record the beautiful readings by Sophie, Francesca Lisette, Connie Scozzaro & Danny Hayward, which i wanted to eat up and hear again and again, but then also i was thinking of how much harder it is to speak/perform/respond when documentation is hovering in the background, promising to solidify the liquid proceedings into historical rocks. Plato says that once a thing is put in writing, it doesn’t know who to speak to anymore, maybe it’s the same with documenting, the promise of solidification closing off the speakers’/performers’/interviewees’ ability to bring the spirit of the staircase to life by someone questioning you. maybe that’s just me, so sensitive to the pressure of speech in public, i know some people can keep a cool head, maybe it will be different when i am old, older, trousers rolled old. i woke up this morning full of the spirits of many staircases and things it is impossible to say when the time is calling to say them, but there is always today, again.

also in a very circuitous and bloggy way this reminds me or of or makes resonant this quote about fame from Jemima Khan this morning in the New Statesman:

There’s a theory about fame: the moment it strikes, it arrests development. Michael Jackson remained suspended in childhood, enjoying sleepovers and funfairs; Winona Ryder an errant teen who dabbled in shoplifting and experimented with pills; George Clooney, a 30-year-old commitment-phobe, never quite ready yet to settle down. Every plan in LA is SBO (“subject to better offer”). Fame infantilises and grants relative impunity. Those that seek it, out of an exaggerated need for admiration or attention, are often the least well equipped to deal with criticism.

POST-APOCALYPTIC SICKBAGS UNITE

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:34:40 +0000

(for anne boyer)

together. at bath-time. breasts in shells. shells for ears. tears

permanently tattooed. men permanently stitched. into our shoulders. on rotation. replaceable wings. men.

whirring gaudily. gauzily. taut, self-effacingly, shruggingly, slouchingly, drunkenly, kissing the air around porcelain shipwrecks. wings.

men of impossible fantasy, designs on interminable unfathomable warming

and holding. in bedraggled tiaras in bed, in lace, in stockings, in flowers in hair a pile of men can’t match, charms unrecognisable

in ornate mirrors, in gold, in tongues upon pillows, in girls, in gold, in tongues upon mirrors, in girls, in gold

wings. in sullen seats, at quiet, unrequited tables. in sullen seats at quiet, unrepentant tables. the talking shadows

toes creep to clinics

in dreaming, a dreaming like begging, in dreaming, a dreaming like supping, a living like dreaming, a wanting like dreaming

a wrecking

"To say “I am not a feminist poet” claims individualistic/individualized performance, beyond “group”...."

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:01:13 +0000

“To say “I am not a feminist poet” claims individualistic/individualized performance, beyond “group”. One sees the temptation—to be taken as a pure individual without allegiances (as if poetry were not a social world?). “I’m not a feminist poet; I’m just a poet.” Or perhaps—“I’m not a woman poet; I’m just a poet.” These remarks, however apparently resistant, are working exactly in the cultural terrain opened by gender-inflected thought—that is, by feminism. Some cultural ironies result. Poets who insisted fervently that they were just poets, not women, have benefited from the existence of a feminist criticism born out of the women’s movement; have had their work valorized as part of the group “women” even if they just wanted, desperately and even damagingly, to be poets, just ungendered poets.”

- Rachel Blau duPlessis, Blue Studios: Poetry & its Cultural Work (2006:55)

"I like to get close to it."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:41:09 +0000

“I like to get close to it.”

- Alice Notley, on the microphone

Photo

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:22:38 +0000

Photo

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 23:05:55 +0000

"I disagree as well with Bataille who is always presenting the sex of the woman as a wound, because..."

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:03:24 +0000

“I disagree as well with Bataille who is always presenting the sex of the woman as a wound, because it implies that there is some penetration into the flesh.”

- Jean-Luc Nancy, 2001 (via lazz)

found these whilst dusting

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:19:00 +0100

found these whilst dusting